I’ve been to Munich twice and for the Oktoberfest both times. The second trip was a group adventure. Ten of us rented apartments in Munich and in Amsterdam for 19 days total.
While in Munich a small group decided to tour the Dachau memorial. I was in the group that passed on this one. It was unfortunate that I was in an odd head-space, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I was in beer drinking mode. (A few years later I braved the Anne Frank House tour on another trip the Netherlands. It’s very heavy emotionally.)
The tour group returned disturbed. They described the grounds and the memorial. It was as grim as you can imagine.
While we were walking out to dinner a very close friend of mine pulled me aside. He said, “you know what the most awful part was? It’s in a neighborhood with shops and homes just past the fence and hedgerow.”
He asked the tour guide when the adjacent homes we’re built. Early 19th century.
Those people lived there while 180,000 political prisoners were housed there. While they ate their lunches over 30,000 human beings were incinerated just behind the trees. How often was it downwind?
People will turn a blind eye. They’re convinced it is for national security. They’re convinced the prisoners are dangerous enemies of the state. They were convinced that removing these people from society would allow the economy to recover, private enterprise thrive and the country to achieve greatness.
Well, I’m not ignoring it. Police menacing and murdering black and brown people in the street. Jailing families running for their lives in concentration camps after kidnapping their children. And saying it’s “the law”.
You want to convince me that supporting Carper, who voted to give the President the authority to constitute ICE? Who voted to confirm Secretary of Homeland Security Nielsen? And why, because the “majority” of the people (whoever they are) don’t care about the issue or think it’s cool?
No.
If you believe in core values we have an option. There are assuredly “other” people who share them. This, and issues like this, are about as clear cut as it comes. If you want to come play games here that’s fine. I don’t get mad or asks for blocks or bans. I haven’t the means or the desire. But I get intensely mean and extremely vulgar. If you think you’re tricky, you aren’t.
These aren’t radical things.
Single Payer Medicare for All.
$15 minimum wage.
Security in housing and in retirement.So, this is where I’m at. Have at it. But if you expect hand-holding or civil treatment this may not be the place for you right now. We have real work to do.
RE Vanella
Editors Note: Saint Simonian Olinde Rodrigues, in his essay “L’artiste, le savant et l’industriel” (1825) coined the term “avant-garde” to mean a person that pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, particualrly in the pursuit of radical social reforms.
What some think of radical social reforms today will be tomorrow’s self-evident facts of life. If REV is the avant-garde today, it is only because he got to where we are all going first.